


The Light to Meet

by shewhospeakswiththunder



Series: Chiasmus [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ahch-To, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark!Rey, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Visions, Takodana, ominous caves, yonic symbolism for those who care to look for it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-03-21
Packaged: 2019-10-28 11:10:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17786270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhospeakswiththunder/pseuds/shewhospeakswiththunder
Summary: "The Last Jedi," if Snoke had peered into the desert and chosen a girl-child for an apprentice instead.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Following the events of [Darkness Rises](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16027253/chapters/37405964#workskin)\-- I would suggest reading that first.

“You have disappointed me. Again.”

Kira felt cool sweat gathering on the exposed skin of her forehead, an uncomfortable reminder of the fact that she had lost her helmet. She now felt naked without it as she knelt before her master, the vibrancy of the throne room’s blood red interior too bright for her unshielded eyes. She realized too late just how much she had come to rely on the protection of its thin transparisteel pane and, without the familiar barrier, she was acutely aware that her emotions were now available for all to see. And the Supreme Leader saw all.

“You were a burning scion of power in the wastelands. I plucked you from that junkyard, from your inconsequential existence, taught you how to harness your strength. And now, after  _ everything _ I’ve given you…  _ look _ at you.”

Snoke rose from the angular contours of his ink-black throne and tottered down the few steps toward her, his mangled, twisted body forcing him into an unsteady gait that belied the true magnitude of his own dark power. Reaching out with a clawed, wrinkled hand, he stroked Kira’s fresh scar, his gnarled fingertip tracing along the searing wound so recently bestowed upon her by her adversary.

“Defeated. Scarred.”

A whimper almost escaped her, but she managed to reign it in. She couldn’t restrain the shudder that rippled sickeningly up her spine.

“What a waste of potential. I’m glad that ridiculous mask is gone. Now, everyone can see what a helpless child you are.” His tone was deceptively soft, but Kira heard the undercurrent of absolute fury. “Get out.”

Practically scrambling out of the throne room and past the red-drenched guards, Kira brutally shoved every thought into a tight corner of her mind as she made her way to the first elevator available.

A stormtrooper and a petty officer were waiting in line, but Kira barged past them and claimed the small elevator for her own, punching the down button viciously. The noise that escaped her, something close to a snarl, stopped them dead in their tracks. She didn’t have any friends among the crew on this ship, and she certainly wasn’t going to make any today.

The elevator began its swift descent but, now that Kira was alone, she found her ferociously subdued thoughts creeping back, and a burning fullness pressed on her throat. One traitorous tear trailed down her cheek, and she knew something was building in her that would have to come out.

With a wave of her hand, Kira brought the elevator to a screeching halt mid-descent, metal screaming against metal, sparks flashing at the control panel. The fluorescent lights flickered once, twice, and shut off.

The unnamable thing growing inside her began to claw at her windpipe, desperately seeking release. Kira felt her knees crumple underneath her as a sob wrenched its way out of her. But the pathetic sound was only the precursor, because the wordless cry that then poured out of her quickly rose to a primal scream. Like a living thing on its own, it rang around the small dark enclosure. Her eyes squeezed shut and the scream from deep inside her did not stop, instead growing until it was her only reality, a reverberating manifestation of the howling void inside her.

There was an ear-piercing shattering. The glass that covered the once-bright lights exploded into a thousand razor-edge splinters, biting into Kira’s exposed skin and tearing through her clothes as they ricocheted.

It was a good pain, the hundreds of slicing stings, a physical pain that made so much more sense than the black storm raging in her heart.

Kira, too, was a fragment, a broken shard, a jagged edge.

And nothing more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kira and Ben connect. Luke is distant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Some graphic descriptions ahead of violence toward a small animal. If this is not your cup of tea, skip the flashback, the section starting with "A small girl..." and ending with "...and she walked away."

A lonely stone hut and a small crackling fire - the perfect spot to sit and be miserable.

Ben should know, having spent a good portion of his adolescence in uncannily similar circumstances while training at the Jedi Temple. Thick waves of nostalgia rolled through him, inviting him to reflect on the glum familiarity of the planet’s remoteness and its sparse living conditions.

The day hadn’t started well.

Luke had changed. Ben remembered his tendency to be grumpy, but that had usually been  tempered by his earnest goodwill toward all his pupils. He hadn’t been a bad teacher, either—just a poor substitute for actual parenting, in Ben’s case. And the blame for _that_ certainly didn’t rest entirely on Luke’s shoulders.

When Ben had arrived at the desolate island earlier that afternoon, the man he had encountered was grizzled, bitter, unyielding. Ben hadn’t expected a warm welcome, to be sure, as the two had not exactly parted on the best of terms, but neither had he expected the terse, “What are you doing here?” he had received.

“The Resistance needs your help,” Ben had replied, after recovering from his uncle’s rudeness.

“How did you find me?”

“R2,” Ben said, waving his hand impatiently as if to brush a longer explanation aside. He was anxious to get to the real reason he was there: he desperately needed to resume his training. A warning had been incessantly ringing in the back of his mind, telling him that his fight with the First Order was far from over and that, if he was going to be of the utmost use to the Resistance, he needed to humbly seek the training he had long ago abandoned. To become a Jedi.

“You’ve come to the wrong place for help, kid,” Luke rumbled. “Go home.” And with that, the old man brushed past him and stalked away down the steep craggy hillside.

Disbelief had rooted Ben in place until a crashing wave broke through his shock, dousing him with chilly sea water. He charged after his uncle, but no amount of arguing or persuading managed to reach him and, as evening shadows slowly crept across the island, Ben had decided to call it quits for the day. He had traveled too far to give up and there was too much at stake, but he was exhausted.

Before embarking on his mission with Chewie, he had pulled the defected stormtrooper, now known affectionately to most as Finn, into a quiet corridor to inquire about Kira Ren. Ben’s thoughts circled back to their conversation.

“What do I know about her?” Finn had given him a nervous half-grin. “Other than hoping she didn’t make it off Starkiller?”

The gravity darkening Ben’s expression quickly wiped the smile off the man’s face, who hastily shook his head. “Not much. She’s powerful, has a nasty temper. And she can read minds,” he had said with a grimace, pointing at his temple. “Very upsetting. Would not recommend.”

“That’s it? You didn’t work with her at all?” Frustration wove its way into Ben’s tone.

“No, we never did. Troopers do their thing, she does Snoke’s thing. I’m sorry I can’t tell you more.”

Ben’s question had remained unanswered. A disappointing start to a thoroughly disappointing journey.

Pulling his scratchy wool blanket tighter over his shoulders, he abandoned thought as he gazed listlessly into the flames, listening to the popping and hissing of the burning wood.

Without warning, all ambient sound was sucked out of the air around Ben, as if by vacuum. A deep, muted thrum settled in its place, and he heard… breathing.

Ben’s head whipped up and saw Kira Ren seated across the fire from him, cross-legged in meditation. Her face was bare and her eyes closed, her helmet, Ben remembered, having been destroyed in their fight on Starkiller. Her face was scarred by the wound he had inflicted during their battle, but it had now healed into a thin scar which snaked up her neck and across her right brow, lending her a dangerous beauty that now beguiled him all the more.

Her eyes shot open, wild and frightened, and a brief disorientation hung, suspended, between them. Kira wasted no further time and shot out a hand to freeze him, just as she had captured him before, on Tatooine. But this time, nothing happened— Ben tested his limbs and found them as freely movable as ever. Kira tried harder, but to no avail.

“How are you doing this?” Ben breathed.

“Rebel filth! You’re going to pay for what you did!” She was on her feet in a flash, fists balled. Her voice reverberated oddly through the strange corridor of bridged space between them.

“Where are you?” Ben asked, scrambling up from his seat on the cold ground, instinctively aware that while they were together, they were also _not._

“Like I would tell _you_ , Solo,” she spat, her voice dripping with venom.

“You’re alive,” he whispered, incredulous. He hadn’t been certain she had survived the explosion that had annihilated Starkiller, and somewhere deep inside him he felt relief.

At that, Kira remained silent, but still breathed heavily, each breath amplified over the inexplicable connection.

A frustrated yell in Shyriiwook pierced the vacuum, and the noise of the island crashed back into existence. Ben could see Chewie arguing with two of the island’s amphibious nuns from the entryway of his hut, holding a large fish aloft and out of their diminutive reach.

When Ben turned back, Kira was gone. He sat back down on the stone floor shakily, Kira’s healed scar and the purple half-circles under her eyes already haunting his thoughts.

 

***

 

The following morning offered Ben no relief. Exhaustion had taunted him with the hope of sleep, but when it finally came to him in the dark chill of the waning night, it was of a restless and unrestorative kind, leaving him more fatigued on waking than he had been in falling.

He felt like a live wire, raw and exposed, and he reasoned that perhaps a practice session with his saber would be of help, both to relieve stress and thoroughly exhaust him, so that his body would have no choice but to finally succumb to slumber. With that resolution in mind, Ben stomped out of his hut with his lightsaber in hand.

It struck Ben as cruelly ironic that the fighting stances he now moved through were the same as those Luke had taught him all those years ago, when he had still been under his tutelage.

Sweat began to slide down his temples and dampen his hair as he practiced, his focus sharp and muscles burning. The cool spray of the waves crashing against the rocky promontory was a blessed relief, and it wasn’t long before he was dripping wet with both salty sea water and perspiration. He removed his drenched shirt and continued, finding in the strenuous exercise a welcome peace that had eluded him for some time.

Finishing the last series of stances, Ben extinguished his saber and looked out over the ocean, breathing in the bracing sea air as he regarded the endless expanse of undulating gray, interspersed by crests of foamy white whipped up by the briny winds gusting beneath the overcast sky. Soothed by the mighty crashing of waves against rocky shoals, he was suddenly deeply grateful for such a refreshing reprieve from the oppressively harsh and arid wastelands of Tatooine.

Lost in reverie, he initially failed to notice the roar of the ocean fading, but was suddenly aware of the familiar cosmic pulse that replaced it – a shocked inhale, as if the Force itself was startled by the impossible distance of millions of parsecs resolving into intimate proximity.

“Not again…” Kira’s voice muttered from behind him. Ben spun around to see her sitting, hunched over a steaming mug clutched within her hands. She looked every inch as tired as he felt, and he was not surprised to sense her flagging pugnacity. At first, she refused to look at him, merely raising her cup and nonchalantly taking a swig, but when her eyes finally glanced up to face him, she promptly spluttered on the drink, her face turning red as she coughed through it.

Ben was suddenly acutely aware of his state of relative undress, but his shirt was still soaking wet, and concern for Kira’s well-being won out over thoughts of modesty. “Are you okay?” Ben asked, stepping closer.

Kira continued to cough but waved him back, with a ragged, “Oh gods…”

Recovering herself and brusquely swiping at the tears streaming down her cheeks brought on by her intense fit of coughing, she continued in a rough voice, “What do you care, anyway?”

Ben chose to ignore the verbal barb, but floundered as to where to go from there. An awkward silence fell, and Ben eventually blurted out, “Who are you, really?”

“I’m sure your _defector_ friend told you all about me,” she growled, her cheeks still cherry red.

“No. He knows even less than I do.”

Kira’s eyes narrowed. “What?” Ben saw her tense apprehensively as comprehension dawned on her face. “What did you see? When we… connected, that first time?”

Ben swallowed dryly as he recalled her painful push into his mind and the vision he had witnessed...

 

***

 

A small girl squatted in a forgotten corner of a sterile hallway, eagerly placing crumbs in front of a small rodent as it scampered around her feet. The girl seemed mesmerized by the lively creature’s wiggling whiskers and playful energy—all in blatant contrast to the order and rigidity of her environment’s artificial surfaces, recycled air, and fluorescent lighting. The little girl giggled and petted its tiny head as it happily accepted her gift with a jaunty twitch of its long, hairless tail.

Her thoughts rang loudly in Ben’s head as if they were his own, bursting into his mind with the radiance of a sunbeam as he felt her joyous delight in having made a friend— finally, something that loved her back.

Then a voice sounded, a cold disembodied whisper that raised goosebumps on Ben’s arms.

 _Your compassion is a weakness, Kira. You must kill it in order to be strong_.

 _What do you mean?_ Kira answered in her thoughts, clearly accustomed to being so intrusively addressed.

 _Kill it. However you see fit_.

Ben watched in horror as the little girl’s face crumbled in immediate understanding of what exactly was being ordered of her. Fat tears began to roll down her hollow cheeks, her face too thin for a human girl of her age. She couldn’t have been older than six.

She was already grieving the loss of her tiny, soft friend, but the voice was not finished with her yet.

_I am your only friend, Kira. No one else can understand your strength and power like I do. They will all run away in fear. I never will. Kill it. Now._

She nodded, wiping her fist across her face, smearing snot and tears over her cheeks. Holding out her hand, she opened herself up the Force, just like her master had taught her. She sobbed loudly once more, and began channeling her dark power. It surged through her, heightened by the turmoil that twisted in her heart, into the frail body of the rat.

Its bones cracked under the pressure of her strength, organs popping, eyes bulging out of its head; Kira’s and Ben’s ears pounded at its silent scream. Ben reeled, feeling every blood-curdling stage of agony suffered by the doomed creature as its fragile body was crushed at the hands of the little girl that had loved it.

She began to scream, too, both from the aching hole that opened inside her chest as she squeezed the life out of her small friend, and also to drown out its short-lived cry of torment. The lights above her flickered a warning, and Ben both heard and felt metal groaning underneath him.

An unbridled, mindless rage exploded within Kira, drowning Ben almost entirely, but when she stood up, her expression was as lifeless as the small corpse on the hard floor, and she walked away.

 

***

 

Ben shook his head, forcing himself back into the present, as a residual shiver ran up his spine.

“I saw a little girl who was told the light inside her was wrong,” he said carefully, watching her closely. Her suspicion seemed to melt away, leaving a wide-eyed vulnerability that pierced him with its raw potency. “Who are you, Kira Ren?” he asked again.

Silence opened up between them once more, and Ben’s heart was thumping so loudly he could swear she must have been able to hear it. The fiery spark that always burned in her eyes dimmed suddenly, her expression eerily similar to the one she had worn in the vision.

“Nobody,” she said at last, turning her back to him. The connection ended, and Ben jumped as another loud blast of sea spray splashed at his back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, and a thousand thanks to my beta, @colliderofhadron!
> 
> (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kira's POV.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE BE WARNED  
> PAY ATTENTION  
> TRIGGER WARNING
> 
> There is one paragraph that contains dub-con. It is the last paragraph of the dream sequence in italics that begins with "Kira's wrists..." and ends with "...flinch hard." 
> 
> Please skip it if it makes you uncomfortable, but I added it for several reasons, which will be expounded upon in the notes section at the bottom.
> 
> Otherwise, enjoy.

Disturbing dreams had haunted Kira’s waking thoughts for days.

_…She was supposed to have already boarded the ship. The rough duracrete tarmac sent shocks through her knees as she ran toward it, just as its engines roared to life. Its thrusters battered her with the force of a tidal wave, whipping her hair around her face and stinging her skin as it broke through the bonds of gravity and lifted off without her…_

_…Faceless pilots busily punched calculations into the mainframe as Kira strode toward the cockpit of a military cargo vessel. They had already climbed well above the stratosphere of the planet below, and a mechanical voice began the official countdown to hyperspace. Leaning over the shoulder of one pilot, a swooping fear seized her gut as she realized that she had boarded the wrong vessel. It was too late. The starlight around the ship had already begun to streak past in the familiar striations of hyperspace…_

_…Tightly strapping herself into the TIE fighter’s snug seat, Kira mentally prepared for her flight test. She confidently grabbed the joysticks, and glanced over the blinking lights that peppered the dashboard. With a sickening lurch, she quickly understood that she had no idea how to pilot this spacecraft. Her hands began to sweat as she nervously punched at the unfamiliar buttons, but the fighter began to fly without her control…_

_…Kira’s wrists were bound tightly above her head as a gag choked her. Her surroundings were incomprehensible, but her attention was decidedly elsewhere. Ben Solo’s hulking figure towered over her, his face so close to hers, twisted in an evil, confident smile. His large hands began palming her body, which she realized was now clad in nothing but a thin black shift. His mouth descended to her neck, greedily kissing the sensitive hollow above her collarbone, dragging one hand across her small, sensitive breast, causing her to flinch hard…_

Every night, Kira would wake to a hammering heart and sweat-soaked sheets wrapped tightly around her in a strangle-hold. Every day, the exhausted distress of her dreams bled into her reality—she was unfocused, distracted, sloppy.

She was shaken to her core.

As if to throw salt in a wound, her days now were plagued with unwanted, unpredictable appearances of the man whom she couldn’t seem to defeat… or couldn’t bring herself to. She didn’t know which was worse.

The connection, unintentionally forged during her disastrous interrogation, had become so much more than just an accidental Force vision. She had pushed too far, she understood that now. But how was she to know he was every bit her equal in strength? How could she have known beforehand just how powerful the link between their minds would be, or how deeply her entire world would be rattled by his inescapable presence?

Kira found herself alone in her chambers, driven to inarticulate distraction; the gears in her mind whirred as she paced up and down the room’s meager length. The ascetic living space had once been a place of respite, however tenuous, but now equated to nothing but a prison, a shiny metal cage. She couldn’t remain within its confines one second longer. An animal fear gripped her with razor-sharp claws, screaming: _Escape. NOW._

Without another moment’s thought, Kira flew out of her quarters and sped down the hallways, charging toward the hangar housing her personal shuttle. The request for take-off clearance took mere minutes - everyone was aware of her tempestuous nature, and no one would dare risk inciting her ire with questions - and Kira soon found herself shooting out of the bright mouth of the hangar into the quiet void of open space.

Her gloved hand lingered over the dashboard, suddenly hesitant. Her master’s retribution would be swift and severe on her return, once he discovered her unauthorized absence, but she roughly brushed the prospect from her thoughts. She couldn’t stay on that metal monstrosity any longer. Her actual destination presented another problem. She had no idea where she was going - forethought wasn’t one of her stronger faculties, and the strength of the sudden urge to get the hell off the _Finalizer_ hadn’t left much room in her headspace for any real plan.

_Somewhere green_ , she decided, looking up any nearby planets boasting forestry on her datapad.

_Takodana_. She was unfamiliar with it, but she was drawn in by its intricate marbled swirls of deep verdancy and sapphire blue waters, and her intense gaze roved over the digital picture as though it were food to a starving beast. That was the place.

Vehemently punching in the calculations to ready her shuttle for hyperspace, something deep inside her murmured, _this is right_. It didn’t totally quell the uneasiness that had been spilling over from her vivid, ominous dreams, but it was enough to spur her onward.

She jammed the lever down and sat back in her chair, allowing the ship to carry her to whatever awaited on Takodana.

 

***

 

An innate pull guided Kira to land the shuttle not too far from an ancient-looking castle, the only man-made structure she could detect for miles.

She entered a courtyard draped in a cacophonous rainbow of battered flags, some of which she recognized, but most she did not. Laying a hand on one of the cool stone walls, she asked herself, _Why this place?_

The quiet of the anterior courtyard belied the buzz of activity within, the purpose of such a place easy to read from the atmosphere and the tired wariness of its panoply of patrons: a neutral ground, for anyone to stay and be welcome, but not for too long.

And yet, even the seething throng of lifeforms couldn’t mask what she felt… _something_ deep beneath her feet, an unnamable presence of some kind. It elicited a shudder that raised goosebumps along her arms— whatever it was seemed to be calling to her.

Cautiously, quietly, Kira stepped into the dimmer light of the cantina, circling around its perimeter, searching out a sheltered seat in a nondescript section of the establishment. A droid had already rolled over to take her order, but Kira, distracted and on edge, couldn’t even remember if she had responded to it.

Her stomach was roiling unhappily, finding even the thought of food nauseating. As for drink, alcohol did little to entice her. She vaguely recalled her early, hazy memories of the desiccated life-long junk scavengers on Jakku, ‘crusties’, as she had called them then, wasting all their hard-earned portions on the briny acid that passed for hooch there. _What a waste_ , she had thought then, and still thought now.

The lilting rhythms of the live band, punctuated by the scratchy tongue-in-cheek intonations from a lead vocalist of indeterminant species, elevated the otherwise more serious timbre of conversation permeating the establishment to an air of conviviality. The ambiance sat much at odds with Kira’s oppressive sense of unease.

She hadn’t been sitting for long when she felt her eyes pulled toward a corner across the room, to a small archway leading to a set of descending spiral steps. Each time the cantina doors opened and closed, a slight breeze whispered past her, as if in encouragement. A surreptitious glance around the room assured her that she did not have an audience, and she rose to make her way down the steps.

Filtered sunlight hit the dusty stones beneath her booted feet, which generated a grating rasp that echoed with each footfall. The hallway opening up before her wasn’t the dank damp she had been expecting of a lower level, but was instead cool and dry, lit by more soft white light from plentiful sconces on the walls. Rooms lined the corridor, hidden behind thick, rusty metal doors locked by keypads.

As benign as the space itself appeared to be, a simple storage space, Kira couldn’t help the discomfort she felt. It was as if something at the edge of her consciousness was trying to make itself known, as if many voices were muttering lowly enough that she couldn’t catch the rhythm of speech to understand; or perhaps a memory resurfacing, but one that had been buried too deeply to recall. There was an energy here, and she was fully within its grasp.

The arcane call led her to the last door on the left, locked like all the others, but before Kira had time to consider how to go about entering, the keypad blinked from red to white with a short _bleep_ of its own accord. Rusty gears crunched with age as the entryway opened before her, and she gingerly crossed the threshold.

The room itself was nothing extraordinary—a store room, at first glance. Varied shapes protruded from beneath thin swathes of fabric, other more exposed items collecting the dust of ages. Kira largely ignored the objects around her, surmising with indifference that these items were probably heirlooms, highly prized collectibles and the like. She didn’t care much for things—what use would they be to her?

One irregular lump in particular, also enshrouded by the ubiquitous wisps of fabric, was the only piece that caught her attention.

The whispers that had floated just beneath the surface of Kira’s perception now sharply rose in volume, a loud susurration that blurred her other senses. Terror thundered through her, but it could not override the insatiable lure of the covered artifact in front of her.

Eyes wide, she surrendered to the inexorable force, and slowly pulled the thin fabric away, coughing through the puff of dust stirred up by the movement.

She froze.

It was hideously melted, the cast-plast twisted and scorched, but there wasn’t a single being in the galaxy that wouldn’t recognize the dark symbol of the Empire’s greatest and most terrifying weapon of all—Darth Vader’s mask.

The murmur of energy swirling around her crescendoed. Breaths short and uneven, she reached out to the grotesque thing with trembling fingers as the voices rose to a clamoring din. Her fingertips brushed the mangled thing and—

Silence.

Then, “ _Rey_.”

Kira jumped as if electrocuted and bolted out of the room, her heavy black robes whirling behind her, almost bowling over a small orange alien toddling down the hall.

Her first panicked instinct was to eliminate the unintentional witness, but she stayed her hand as it automatically leapt to the saber at her hip. This small life form had no idea who Kira was, and maybe it had answers.

Its head tilted up at her with a scrutinizing, searching stare. The spectacles perched on its head magnified the creature’s eyes several times over and, as the alien twisted the lenses, its eyes impossibly seemed to broaden.

Kira met it gaze-for-gaze, offering only a leery coolness despite her thudding heartbeat and sweating hands.

“That mask called to you, child.” The voice was female and held no condemnation, only curiosity.

Kira could only swallow dryly in response, adrenaline still pounding through her body.

As if sensing the deep-seated fear that primed her, the diminutive alien tentatively approached.

“You’ve been through a great deal,” she said quietly, her enormous eyes traveling down the scar that marred Kira’s cheek. “I have been alive a long time, and I see things that many cannot see.” By this time, she had crossed enough distance to stand right in front of Kira, looking up at her steadily. Her wrinkled ochre hand reached out to take Kira’s, but Kira flinched away from the contact; her rebuffal didn’t deter the strange creature from continuing. “I know the fear of a crossroads when I see it. Yes, there is a decision ahead. It haunts you. Listen to me, child— stagnation is the death of all things. We must move forward. Do not let the familiarity of the past stop you from reaching out to what calls to you.”

The breath left Kira’s lungs.

“Who are you, child?”

Kira ran.

 

***

 

Rey was dead.

Kira’s master had coached her through it, entrusted to her the task of destroying the pathetic child long ago, so that Kira could become stronger than that miserable, skinny cast-off ever could have been.

Rey was dead.

But there was still no peace for Kira Ren.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To address the dub-con bit:  
> I don't usually write dub-con or non-con or any of that stuff, because it makes me uncomfortable. Because it is literally only one paragraph of a dream sequence, I chose not to label this fic as dub-con. HOWEVER. I chose to include it to highlight several things.
> 
> 1\. It illustrates that Kira is afraid of her attraction to Ben, not Ben himself.  
> 2\. It illustrates via contrast that the real Ben in this fic is kind and cautious with her.  
> 3\. It illustrates that Kira is not very self-aware. She has several subconscious conflicts that are manifesting in her dreams.
> 
> So there. (ﾉಠ_ಠ)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ...in which some crazy Force-type things happen.

Ben had been dogged _all day_ by an annoying buzz at the border of his perception.

He had no name for it, only an awareness of something snagging his attention every so often, snatching his thoughts away from the usual cascade of internal monologue. The sensation resembled calloused fingertips running over silk, catching at the delicate fabric and interrupting the tactile flow.

The feeling was irksome, but at least it diverted him from his depressed melancholy, brought on by his failure to recruit his fractious uncle to the Resistance’s cause. Ben hadn’t begged, at least not yet, but his entreaty had only fallen on willfully deaf ears, without even an inch of success. It was beginning to hit him, hard.

He’d been on the brink of giving up entirely, but his stomach rolled sickeningly at the idea of returning empty-handed to those who counted on him, so he now found himself sitting motionless in the cockpit of his ship, head in hands, as the cloud-muted daylight drew closer and closer to dusk.

_What am I going to do?_

 

***

 

Kira was frantic. The gleaming black walls of her shuttle seemed to be closing in on her and there wasn’t enough air. It threw her heart into a stuttering staccato that throbbed in her ears.

The idea of sleep was ludicrous at this point, toeing the edge of the emotional precipice of outright _panic_ as she was. Her body desperately needed to be doing something, but wasn’t able to devote itself to any task as her focus frayed into tatters.

She fled the stifling ship, disappearing into the darkening forest and crashing through its thick undergrowth with abandon, chased mercilessly by her wretched thoughts. Tripped by low-lying vines and clawed by grasping fingers of branches, she desired nothing more than to leave the dreadful tangle of misery and despair far behind.

 _Who_ **_are_ ** _you, child?_

Every time she stumbled or felt the snap of wood on her skin, it spurred her onward—pain was instructive. And distracting.

The gaping maw of a dark cave rose suddenly before her, abruptly halting her blind forward-charge. Delicate vines hung from its lip, trailing daintily around its entrance to meet leaf-strewn soil and, as Kira regarded it, she was almost surprised as much by its pervasive sense of calm as the unexpected appearance of the cave itself. The silent blackness within was total, and Kira knew that if she were to step inside, it would swallow her whole.

The idea did not displease her.

Another nameless, inchoate pull urged her to enter; similar and yet different to the one from the depths of the cantina. This felt… deeper. Older.

Kira didn’t waste any time deliberating. She would do whatever necessary, _anything,_ to escape the grappling, searing question that threatened to choke her. She felt the burning rise of bile in her throat as her stomach heaved, at odds with the serenity of her surroundings.

_Who are you, Kira Ren?_

Brushing aside a veil of hanging vines, she purposefully strode in and let the darkness enfold her.

 

***

 

Ben jumped at the resounding boom of a lightning bolt. He hadn’t even realized it was raining outside.

It was almost always overcast on this lonesome chunk of rock and, more often than not, unpleasantly inclement. Descending the open ramp, he looked out at the downpour, falling heavily as nighttime wrapped the island in its dark embrace. It splattered on stone and flattened verdant stretches of coarse grass, ran in gushing rivulets where gravity and old erosion guided.

Another round of lightning ripped through the night, causing Ben to flinch again. The darkness held an air of expectant portent.

He retreated back into the ship.

 

***

 

She was as good as blind, but there was nothing left but to move forward, each step a test of willpower and trepidation. There was no telling what each subsequent footfall would bring—more cool bedrock? A gaping hole? Some other hidden terror?

Inwardly, Kira assured herself that she had most likely only been walking fifteen standard minutes. It felt more like an hour.

The floor, over time, proved itself to be blessedly free of any obstacle whatsoever, and her stride grew bolder as the minutes ticked by. Eventually, the echoes of her boots faded as the stone gave way to softer ground.

Noticing this, Kira bent and placed a gloved hand to the cave floor, deciding it must be some species of moss that cushioned her feet. She didn’t linger—she still felt the deeper dark of the cave beckoning to her.

The great, thick blackness gradually became interspersed with faintly bio-luminous plant life, glowing in soft cerulean blooms across the surrounding walls. Where the air had been dry and chilly, it was now bordering on humid.

Up ahead, Kira noticed a thin strand of white light. Drawing closer, she made out a bright glinting within the ray as well as a faint patter of water, sounding as though it were falling onto stone from an elevated source.

She approached the curious beam without stopping to question the soft white morning light - by all accounts, it should have been moonlight at this time of the night cycle – as it gracefully shone through a hole high in the ceiling of the cave, ringed with bright green fronds and leafy vines. A small waterfall trickled down with the light, sparkling playfully, crystalline.

Unused to such private moments of serene beauty, Kira was overcome. The narrowing sensation around her windpipe eased as her hammering heart relaxed into a steadier beat. She closed her eyes and listened.

Slipping one hand out of her glove, she held it out to the falling water as the light glittered and gleamed capriciously within it. Her fingertips didn’t even have a moment to relish its brisk coolness before a deep voice sounded from nowhere, from everywhere.

“Rey.”

She yanked her hand back. She could recognize that resounding baritone anywhere.

It was Ben Solo’s voice.

“Solo?” Her own voice cracked. “Where are you?”

The light and waterfall vanished instantly, as if something dense had drifted over the hole in the cave ceiling. A wave of indistinguishable whispers rose up, alongside a stiff wind that whipped down the length of the cave.

Harsh and scorching, it burned Kira’s nose and eyes with its sulfurous stink as well as its intolerable heat. A haunting scream, so close—the smell of burnt hair and flesh—

Bloodshot, yellow eyes—

The world tilted. Kira scrambled and slid, falling hard on her hands and knees onto familiar polished black marble, her own terrified reflection gleaming back at her from the floor.

“Look at me,” she heard growling above her.

She already felt the intolerable ache of remorse deep in her heart. Her master’s retribution was upon her.

“Look at me!”

She did.

But it was her own face that glared down at her, magnified a hundred-fold in size and apoplectic with rage. Her own thin hands, monstrous in size, gripped the arms of the angular throne, claw-like and pale. Mania glazed the hazel eyes she recognized from the mirror.

Kira recoiled, gasping, but in her scramble backward she toppled over an edge and fell headfirst into—

Soft snow. Ben Solo’s face hovered above hers, eyes roving over her. Pity, desire, and curiosity all warred for space in his features as he looked down at her, surrounded by the snow-dampened hush of the evening forest.

She couldn’t tear her gaze away from his face, the worry-creased brows, the now-familiar angular nose. He peered directly into her eyes, and said with a tone of wonder and urgency—

“Rey.”

Her already racing heart skipped a beat, but a forceful pull behind her navel dragged her down, through the once-solid ground beneath her.

“Ben—!”

 

***

 

_Ben—!_

Ben heard his name, soft and faint, echoing in the air around him. It was a shiver, a frightened whisper, couched within a crack of electricity from the raging storm outside.

He’d decided to leave the bleak confines of his ship in favor of building a small fire in the stone hut he’d been given to sleep in. Despite his efforts to ward off the damp chill that had settled on the island, it still sank its icy teeth into him.

The whisper jolted him out of reverie, and he’d almost convinced himself that it had been a trick of sound in the storm, a product of the howling winds battering the steep bluffs, when it sounded again.

_Please…_

“Kira?” he answered uncertainly. He stood as an inexplicable feeling rose - something reaching for him, just beyond his grasp. Simultaneously acknowledging how stupid it was to reach out into thin air at nothing and consciously deciding to do so anyway, he extended his hand.

A suspended moment passed, and then fingers touched his.

Shuddering, gasping for air, Kira Ren materialized before him, immediately sinking to the rough dirt floor on her hands and knees, dry heaves wracking her small frame. Ben sprang forward to wrap her trembling frame in his gray wool blanket and, kneeling next to her, he fought the strong urge to pull her into him and hold her to his own warmth.

Kira raised her eyes to his. They were wide as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“What’s happening?” she choked out as a strong shiver wracked her.

“It’s all right, you’re safe here,” he tried to comfort her. He didn’t have an answer to her question anyway.

“I saw… I saw myself, and I—” She was gripped by a fresh wave of shivering, and Ben wasn’t sure whether it was caused by her recollection or the chill air.

He had no idea what to do for her. Would she allow a comforting hand to the shoulder? This was his enemy, he reminded himself. Although, to look at her now… she was small, and frightened. Diminished.

“I don’t understand!” she sobbed.

“It’s all right,” he murmured again. What else could he say? “I’m here.”

She cast him an uncertain glance and took a deep, shuddering breath. “It was a Force vision.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

She thought it over, but shook her head.

“Can I… get you anything?”

She shook her head again, and Ben fell back on his rump, now able to accept in full the incredulity of the current situation.

“I don’t know what I want anymore,” Kira sighed shakily, squeezing her eyes shut as two fresh tears trailed down her face.

Ben hadn’t the slightest idea how to respond to that and, instead, remained silent, allowing her the freedom to continue if she wanted.

“How do you know that name?” she asked.

“What name?”

“‘Rey.’ No one knows that name,” she ended in a whisper.

“I—I don’t…”

“Ben,” she interrupted, locking eyes with him again. Time stopped as he watched her slowly extend a shaking hand to him. He reached out just as slowly, almost holding his breath as his hand inched towards her at a measured speed, despite his eagerness to make the physical connection.

Their fingertips brushed.

A breathless hush.

A crash as the door flew open, a shift in the air. “What the _hell?_ ”

Ben’s head whipped around to see Luke, soaked to the skin, looming furiously in the doorway of his stone hut. He quickly turned back to Kira, to reassure her, protect her, but his heart sank when he saw that she’d gone, blanket and all.

“What are you _doing?_ ” Luke roared. “Do you know who that is?”

“Yes!” Ben shot back, standing up angrily.

“You came here and brought your enemy with you!” Luke’s accusation filled the tiny hut with its forceful energy.

“I don’t think she’s the enemy,” Ben said evenly.

“You realize what you’ve done? If what you say is true about the First Order’s capabilities, you’ve put this entire planet in danger!”

“She has no idea where we even are!”

“How do you know that? How can you be sure?” Luke demanded, seething. Even in the darkness Ben could see the old man’s eyes glinting dangerously.

Ben wrestled with the notion. He couldn’t be certain, but Kira didn’t seem to be in any state to launch an attack on any planet, much less such a remote one as this. “I don’t,” he admitted. “But what if she’s the _answer_ to ending this all? What if she’s the key to bringing down the First Order? She’s conflicted, I can tell—”

“You have no idea who she is or what she’ll do. She could be playing you right into her hands.”

“Wait.” Ben froze as a realization dawned on him. “How do you know about her? You’ve been in exile on this planet for years. I never mentioned her to you.”

Luke grumbled something unintelligible.

“How do you know her?” Ben pressed, feeling his chest begin to knot up.

Luke glared bitterly at him for a moment, before letting out a heavy sigh. “I found her, in some backwash desert junkyard,” he relented. “I’d felt her strength, and I thought I could teach her. But when I got to her, I could see she was overcome by the Dark side, even though she was only a child…” Luke shook his head. “I feared for my life, for the galaxy. I almost killed her then, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the strength. She was so young.”

“You let Snoke have her.” It wasn’t a question.

“She was a lost cause even then, Ben. Even as a youngling, her mind was so deeply rooted in darkness—you didn’t see what I saw in her!”

“You’re wrong.”

“Ben. Don’t be rash. _Think_ about this.”

“You knew. You knew Snoke wanted her, and you let him…” He couldn’t finish the thought, suddenly nauseous. “I have to go.”

“Don’t be foolish, Ben, you can’t go to her. She’s too dangerous!”

“Just because you failed her doesn’t mean I can’t try!” Shoving past his uncle, Ben stormed off into the driving rain. Finding Chewie already aboard the ship, he strapped himself into his seat and prepared for takeoff.

Chewie rumbled his concern.

“We have to leave. I’ll explain on the way.”

It was good enough for Chewie, who’d had his fill of this stormy, windswept rock as well, and he strapped in next to Ben without further hesitation.

As they pelted through the falling rain, Ben could feel a thin gossamer thread drawing him to her, her life-force a bright beacon in the cold, dark sprawl of space.

She wasn’t too far.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An elevator ride and an encounter in a throne room.

Ben would have been lying if he had said he wasn’t frightened.

His wrists were bound, weighed down by the most substantial set of handcuffs he had ever seen, throwing his gait off-kilter slightly. Rows of blank, plexiglass eyes followed him in an almost robotic sweep as he was marched along the endless aisles of white helmets. The sheer number of stormtroopers, standing to attention with blasters ready, was staggering.

The hangar was _enormous_ , a well-oiled machine of hive-like activity that left Ben wondering exactly what his mother’s ragtag team of rebels could accomplish against this kind of might. And this was just _one_ hangar.

That alone was enough to elicit fear in any sane person but, when the tractor beam had pulled his jettisoned escape pod in, it was the look on Kira’s face that had struck him to the core. The first glimpse of her standing over him, so firmly in reality at last, had made his heart buck in his chest.

She was now following closely behind him, expression as stony and impassive as the sheer cliffs on Ahch-To. She was so close, and Ben found her actual proximity a little bewildering after their remote meetings, which had spanned unfathomable space and defied all known laws of physics. Yet he had never felt so distant from her as in that moment.

Realistically, he thought, what sort of reception should he have expected from her? A warm embrace? They were still enemies, from any outsider’s perspective. What options did she reasonably have, other than to apprehend him as she would a foe of the First Order?

She had obviously known he was coming. He had made no attempt to hide his arrival and the tenuous thread between them logically worked both ways, both in guiding him to her and alerting her to his arrival. Ostensibly to his intention, as well, he realized. To Kira’s credit, at least she had bothered to meet him face-to-face.

The long walk to the elevator shaft at the far end of the terminal felt like an eternity, but they eventually arrived at its doors and Kira casually waved off the stormtroopers attempting to board with them. The soldiers didn’t argue, departing with an alacrity that smacked of eagerness to be gone.

And then, they were alone.

Kira steadfastly refused to acknowledge Ben, choosing to stare at the metal paneling in front of her instead. As the elevator began its speedy ascent into the ship proper, he recognized the swell of warring emotion beneath her outwardly cold façade.

“That name… _Rey_ ,” he prompted, breaking the dense silence. “It’s your name, isn’t it?”

Kira flinched. Fighting to regain her composure, she replied flatly, “Rey is dead.”

A visceral spike of conflict seemed to have jolted through her at the sound of his voice, buoying a spark of hope in him.

“I don’t think so,” he said, curiously observing the waspish retorts rising to her mouth, but she managed to bite them all back.

“She had to die. There was no other choice,” she choked out, finally.

“Maybe not back then,” Ben admitted. “But you have choices now. You know you do, I can feel it.”

Her bright hazel eyes darted to his chest, his mouth... but she said nothing.

A lifetime of experience had taught Ben many things about his own body. For one, it was large for a humanoid and, because of that, was often perceived as intimidating by those with smaller frames. Thus, it was with great care that he moved toward her, toeing the fine line between _closer_ and _scaring her off_.

To his great relief, she did not back away, and her gaze remained locked with his as he stepped closer.

“You’re in no position to tell me what I’m thinking,” she said, a little breathlessly.

“That’s not what I’m trying to do.”

“What _are_ you trying to do?” It was almost a whisper.

One step closer. He allowed his eyes to roam over her exposed neck, her scar. “You tell me,” he prompted.

A blush blossomed across her cheeks, highlighting the faint freckles bridging her small nose. _So beautiful._

The elevator stopped and Ben whirled on his heel, heart sinking as the doors abruptly darted open to reveal a spectacle unlike anything he had seen before.

His first thought was that it resembled what he imagined a living heart must look like from the inside. The room was lavished in an abundance of blood-red, everywhere—illuminating the vast expanse of walls, bleeding darkly into the glossy black floor. Ben counted eight armored guards, dressed head-to-toe in the same garish hue, flanking the enormous throne rising from the center of the far wall. The hideous creature perched upon the seat of power was clad in a robe of shimmering gold, contrasting starkly with the chamber’s formality and elegant geometry.

“Well done, my faithful apprentice,” the abomination drawled. “Welcome, Ben Solo.”

 

***

 

As with most of the circumstances that wove Kira’s life together, she was left with few options.

Her life had been one of hardship and hunger. If it wasn’t her belly screaming its emptiness, it was her heart. She didn’t exactly hate these facets of her existence, as they had frequently been most instructive... There were many lessons to be learned from pain and want.

But now, Ben was coming to _her_. And that changed everything.

Any future that began with a clandestine rendezvous with an enemy could only end in horror. Her master would find them, one way or another, and desertion was out of the question. So she had abandoned the notion before it was even a fully formed thought in her mind.

That had left only one possible avenue of action: she had to return to the First Order.

Following the interruption of her last connection with Ben, Kira had been unceremoniously plopped back in front of her ship on Takodana, disoriented and confused. She was distantly aware that Luke Skywalker himself had been the one to intrude on their strange communion, but didn’t spare the idea any further thought - at this point, it was of little consequence. Ben’s urgency to find her had rung loud and clear through their rapidly strengthening bond, and that was the clear priority.

She had clambered up into the cockpit and raced back to the _Supremacy_ , trying to prevent her imagination from wandering too far in any particular direction, but there had been several things she knew with complete certainty.

Ben Solo would arrive on the _Supremacy_.

She would bring him to her master.

And Ben Solo would most certainly die.

Her insides _writhed_ with the knowledge. For the first time in her eighteen standard years, she had been treated with kindness and gentleness. Someone had inexplicably looked at her with something other than contempt or malice, after she had been almost buried alive in desolate darkness for years, taught to _embrace_ it even. Her fragile soul had cried out for the light she had sensed in Ben, the cautious care he had shown her, and she could not understand how such a gift could so quickly be torn away from her.

If Kira thought she had been broken before, she had been wrong. Oh, how very wrong.

The good man who believed in her was now dying slowly before her eyes, at the gnarled fingers of a master who had forced her to extinguish her light.

Desperately battling to repress her horror, she watched helplessly as blue electricity coursed through Ben’s twitching body, filling the chamber with his tortured screams. A sickening fear pooled in Kira’s gut, cold and slick as gasoline.

And then it ignited.

A spark of righteous fury exploded within her, an anger unlike any she had experienced before. Focused and blazing, it coursed through her veins, infusing her with an unprecedented sense of purpose and conviction. She knew what she had to do.

Barely managing to cloak her deadly intentions, she remained impassive as Ben’s cries faded; Snoke carelessly dropped him to the floor and roughly dragged him to kneel in front of her, manipulating his body like a humiliated puppet.

“You are finally ready, Kira Ren,” Snoke’s oily voice tainted the air. “Strike him down. Embrace your power.”

And still Ben looked up at her with hope, even then, on his knees in front of her and still reeling with aftershocks of pain.

Kira raised her hand in front of Ben’s face, fingers extended, her features contorted in a livid grimace.

“Yes!” Snoke exclaimed, reveling with indecent pleasure at the waves of absolute fury rolling off of her. “Finish it! This is your final test!”

Summoning every iota of strength she had in the Force, she clamped her fist shut.

She was so much stronger this time, a thousand times surer.

With a violently delicious _squelch_ and _pop_ , Kira crushed Snoke’s sinewy heart inside him; the warm, slippery organ quickly collapsed under the force, blood pooling within his chest cavity. She flicked her eyes up towards the throne, neither triumphant nor remorseful as she coldly regarded the hideous mask of surprise and pain contorting her master’s face.

He was dead in seconds. His towering corpse fell to the marble floor with a fleshy _thunk_.

And the fight began.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The aftermath of the showdown.

The battle was over. Snoke was dead.

The power of the Force still sung in Kira’s veins as glowing embers cascaded around them like raindrops on fire. She could also sense the Force chanting in Ben’s blood from across the room, the most beautiful harmony she had ever heard.

Her heart was pumping hard and sweat poured over her brow, but all that was forgotten as soon as she caught Ben’s adrenaline-fueled stare, directed right at her. The humming weapon he had wrestled from one of the guards hung loosely by his side as he stood gazing towards her, his broad chest still heaving with exertion.

In the melee of battle, Kira had somehow gotten hold of Ben’s lightsaber, after her own had been knocked from her grip. It felt light in her hands, a good deal less weighty than her own saber and, glancing at it briefly, she surveyed its sleek and utilitarian design. She rather liked it.

It wasn’t hers, though, so she let it go and watched it float through the air as she guided it softly to Ben, who caught it with a look of obvious relief as he cast the guard’s weapon away. It rattled harmlessly across the floor, but its noisy distraction didn’t serve for long—his gaze whipped right back to her.

“Kira—”

“We did it,” she interrupted, gasping through her labored breathing. Abruptly about-facing to look at her former master’s crumpled body, now sprawled across the glinting marble floor, she noticed the ground also bore the scars of combat. Its smooth perfection was littered by bodies and lashed with smoldering gouges, where it had been cauterized by weaponized electro-plasma.

“Kira,” Ben rasped, taking purposeful strides toward her. Her head snapped back to him and his extended hand. “Let’s go.”

She seemed rooted to the spot, and his words hung in the air for a few heartbeats before she slowly began to shake her head. “No,” she said weakly.

Ben’s eyes widened in disbelief. “Why?”

“I—I can’t.”

Confusion and disappointment warred across his features, and Kira found herself unable to look at him—unable to say what she had to, while still maintaining eye contact. Speaking to the ground, she said, “Anywhere else… I’m nobody. Or worse.” She cringed, imagining her swift execution at the hands of Ben’s people. “This is my chance.”

“You’re not nobody. Not to me.”

Now her eyes flicked up to his, searching his wide, pleading gaze. He meant it.

“Stay here, with me.” The idea flashed before her, a thrill of hope with it. “We’re so _powerful_ when we’re together. Didn’t you feel it? Think of what we could do!” She could see it in her mind’s eye and _wanted_ it, more than anything. An entire empire lay before them— all they had to do was take it.

“No, not this way,” Ben insisted. Kira felt the urgency beneath his gentle tone, the undercurrent of rising desperation.

“We could be together.” A familiar unpleasant burn arched up the back of her throat, threatening to cut off her voice as her words wavered in the air.

He swallowed hard. “Not here, not…” he trailed off, surveying the still smoking carnage. She watched as he raised his palm towards her again, a deep ache unfurling in her chest. His chin trembled. “Please.”

Her vision blurred. Once again, she was out of options.

Crossing the distance between them, she bypassed his outstretched hand and stepped right into his personal space. He was frozen, glued to her every move, and the tense hush heightened with his speeding heartbeat. The silent question hung expectantly over them.

Hesitating at first, she reached up, as if to cup his cheek.

And knocked him unconscious.

His knees buckled, but she halted his fall with a wave of her hand. Furiously swiping at the hot tears slipping over her cheeks, she levitated his body out of the gore-splashed room and into Snoke’s nearby personal escape vessel. With a gentleness she didn’t know she possessed, she carefully set him down and strapped him to a seat, hastily punching in the coordinates of the nearest planet.

A jarring shudder suddenly rocked through the Dreadnought, a bone-rattling quake that almost knocked her over halfway through the process, and she was abruptly reminded that the First Order was still engaged in a scuffle with the rebel group. She had been dimly aware of the active pursuit through hyperspace, made possible by their new tracking tech - another notch in Hux’s belt. As if he needed any more excuses for his already swollen self-importance and haughty condescension.

Perhaps Ben would wake up before planetfall and program his own set of coordinates to his precious Resistance. If there was anything left of them.

The eyes of the First Order had been resolutely trained on the skirmish taking place in front of them and, while the Resistance’s unarmed transport vessels attempted their futile escape, _no one_ was aware of the bloody coup that had just occurred while their backs were turned.

They would find out soon enough.

And soon enough, they did.

By the time Kira launched Ben into space and returned to the throne room, with no idea what the next step in her plan should be, she found Hux standing above the corpse of the former Supreme Leader. He was so awash with emotion that Kira could hardly pick a word to describe exactly what emanated from him, but none of them boded well for her.

At the sound of her footsteps, Hux whirled around and fixed her with a dagger-like glare.

“What. Happened.” His voice was laced with fury.

“Ben Solo bested me in combat and murdered the Supreme Leader. We underestimated him.”

Hux had trouble pulling his thoughts together to form a coherent response.“Ben Solo murdered our Supreme Leader, and left _you_ alive?” he spat through gritted teeth as his disbelief and anger spiked dangerously.

“He knocked me out.”

“Our Supreme Leader is _dead!_ ” Hux roared. “Our ship is in shambles from some purple-haired zealot martyr, and _you_ are just _standing here_ …!”

“We need to regroup, Admiral. Too much time and too many resources have been wasted trailing this sad excuse of a rebellion all over the galaxy. We have to retreat and refocus.” Kira edged her words with Force-woven persuasion, hoping against hope that it might help, might distract him until she figured out what to do. It did not.

“And who are you, _Ren_ , to be making these decisions?!” Spittle flew out of the man’s mouth as his features contorted with hatred.

Her hand flew up instinctively, lifting Hux high up into the air in a chokehold that had the pale skin of his face darkening to an unsightly puce. She held him there until she saw the grim acceptance in his eyes, and only then did she let him free fall, his knees smacking the marble floor, hard.

She watched coolly as he gagged and coughed; felt his pain—his crushed and bruised windpipe, how much each struggling breath burned him. But his thoughts betrayed him, for she also felt his amorphous hatred crystallize into something sharp, something deadly. A weapon she someday would feel between her ribs, she thought to herself, if she wasn’t careful.

“Long live the Supreme Leader,” she said quietly, offering him the words.

His eyes caught hers, and he repeated her as well as he could through his damaged throat: “Long live the Supreme Leader.”

 

***

 

Safely deposited on Crait, the abandoned mineral planet, the first thought that had flitted through Ben’s sluggish consciousness was how cold it was. As he had slowly awoken, each subsequent minute had revealed new information—darkness, the feel of velvet, dashboard lights blinking.  His mind had struggled to piece together this new reality, where he was, how he had gotten to be there... when the memory had slammed into him.

_Kira overcame her master to save him._

But even as his heart had begun to soar, it plunged in a painful nosedive almost immediately —she had knocked him out. _Again_. Presumably, she had been the one to place him in this small, yet strangely lavish, escape pod. He certainly couldn’t remember doing it of his own accord and, if someone from his own side had helped him escape, wouldn’t he or she have accompanied him?

He recalled how close she had been, how her hand had drifted up to touch him...

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t make sense of it. She _wanted_ them to be together, she had even said so! But then, why send him away? And if she had been manipulating him all along, why wasn’t he sitting in a cell in the bowels of her ship right this moment? She had even returned his saber.

As he scuffed the coarse ground under his feet in frustration, his boot left a red gash against the dazzling white of the salt blanketing the entire plain. Raw, torn, exposed, it looked just like how he felt. Slinking back into the derelict hangar and away from the sun’s blinding reflection, Ben squinted as his eyes adjusted to the darkness that enveloped him once inside.

As inexplicable as it was, he had been spared.  But the Resistance itself had not been. Less than fifty had made it through the First Order’s merciless onslaught, and those that remained fully expected to be finished off any time soon – the enemy never left survivors if they could help it.

Striding into a deserted control room, Ben tried to steady his breathing. A storm of unpleasant feelings brewed inside him and, as the minutes passed, he found it increasingly difficult to reign it in, his chest tightening and hands clenching with the effort.

It was only when the familiar sensation of a breathless void opened to him that he became distracted, and there she was - every bit as surprised to see him as he was to behold her, so soon after they parted. Their connection hummed, an open channel, and that _rightness_ he always felt with her settled into place.

She graced him with a lingering glance, her expression unreadable but, just as he inhaled to speak, she slammed down on the connection, closing it off and shutting him out so completely it felt like he had suddenly lost a part of himself.

He wasn’t sad anymore. No, now he was _angry_.

And he couldn’t contain it any longer. He threw a dusty chair across the room, picked up a keyboard and cracked it in two over an outdated monitor. He ignited his lightsaber and blindly sent his rage through it, wantonly destroying the obsolete equipment, sparks flying around him, metal and cast-plast sizzling orange with heat.

He didn’t care. It was all useless, anyway.

 

***

 

Leia could have detected the microcosm of wild, hurting fury from a planet away, even if she hadn’t heard the echoes of reckless destruction reverberating down the corridor. It forced her into a bitter nostalgia of Ben’s younger, more tumultuous years, before she and Han had sent him away to Luke for guidance. The years may have physically distanced them, but Leia knew her son’s heart, and he was in pain.

So she went to him.

Simmering chaos greeted her. Bits and pieces of machinery were scattered everywhere and almost no surface was left unscathed. The large console against the far wall still hissed with the heat of the weapon in Ben’s hand, thankfully now extinguished. His breathing was ragged, and she heard the rasp of unshed tears sticking in his throat.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She had never been one to beat around the bush, and this wasn’t the first emotional meltdown she had dealt with.

“They won,” he choked out. “Uncle Luke won’t come back, we’re stuck on this godforsaken salty _shitpile_ of a planet with nothing to show for everything we did, everything we sacrificed—!”

“You did everything you could,” she tried to console.

“It wasn’t good enough! We’re right back where we started. No, we’re _worse_ off than we started!” he roared back, his body tense.

This wasn’t the heart of the matter – a mother could always tell.

“Ben, _what’s wrong_?” Leia lowered herself gingerly into the only chair in the room that had been left intact. Everything with her was done gingerly these days.

He chewed on his words, weighing them, gauging them, and what he said next did something that almost never happened anymore: it astonished her.

“I thought I could convince Kira Ren to turn. She’s… unsure of herself. We—we talked. There’s this… connection between us. I don’t know—I don’t know. I thought…” He closed his eyes, collecting himself. “But she didn’t. She chose the First Order instead.”

Leia narrowed her eyes at him, things starting to click into place. “Instead of what, Ben?”

“Instead of us. Me.”

“Do you… have feelings for…?” she stumbled, incredulous, unable to finish the thought.

Ben remained silent as a stone. It was all the answer she needed.

“Who else knows about this—this connection?” The words _traitor_ and _scandal_ began to set off alarms in her head.

“No one,” he answered quickly. “Maybe Snoke, but he’s dead now. She killed him. To save me.”

She rubbed her face with her hand, unable to stop all the thoughts that now clamored for attention in her skull.

Luke and their father. Snoke dead, murdered by his apprentice. Who had saved her son.

A dawning comprehension of possible futures lodged itself firmly in her mind. If Ben hoped for Kira Ren, then perhaps…

It was an outlandish, far-fetched notion, and Leia refused to pursue it further until she had more information and the time was right, so she acknowledged it with an internal nod, but moved on.

She had a Resistance to rebuild from scraps and an upset son, but the spark of hope had not died yet. Who knew what strange and unanticipated triumphs sat on their horizon?

 

***

 

Kira crouched low, running bare fingers through Millicent’s fur, marveling at its softness, at the calming rumble the motion elicited from the small animal. There had never been anything so soft in all the galaxy, she thought, her own hum of contentedness blooming from the base of her head and blossoming over her whole body.

There were no more whispers.

No more slimy thoughts dripping their caustic poison onto her soul, eating away at her spirit from the inside out.

She wasn’t half-choking on words she could barely bite back, or constantly writhing with relentless discomfort or unwarranted incendiary anger. Intrusive memories didn’t play before her eyes like an inescapable horror holo as often as they used to, and the barely restrained urge to scream or destroy hadn’t forced itself on her in hours.

It wasn’t emptiness. There wasn’t a _lack_ of any kind. Kira was used to the hollow ache of nothingness, the despair that she wouldn’t feel _anything_ ever again. She had borne it and suffered it since she had been small.

This was different.

This was… freedom.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What a journey this has been! It's crazy to think how much I've learned about writing and about myself as a writer from this story. 
> 
> Some good/bad news: I WILL be continuing this fic! But not until after EPIX has been released in December. I've made a conscious effort to stay true to the themes presented in each installment of the movies in regards to Rey/Kylo's relationship, and I wish to continue to do so for the last installment. I'm dying in anticipation, and I have a feeling that as soon as I walk out of the movie theater I'm already going to be furiously scribbling down ideas for my version. 
> 
> I have several other WIPs that will be coming out in the meantime, and updates will be posted. 
> 
> Many thanks to those who have taken the time to read this!

**Author's Note:**

> If you like, feel free to visit my [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/shewhospeakswiththunder) and/or my [twitter](https://twitter.com/shewhospeaks2)\-- I post updates there. And random Star Wars-y things I like.


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